‘Very unfair’: Property taxes up 20 per cent in cash-strapped Ontario township

Tammy Daigle has spent more than half of her life in the rural, northern Ontario community of Fauquier-Strickland, focusing on her family and rarely thinking about the small town’s finances.

But that changed in July when the township announced it was in a financial crisis with a $2.5-million operating deficit, sending shock waves through the community of around 500 people near Kapuskasing.

The municipality’s scramble to keep the lights on has led to a 20 per cent property tax hike for 2025, on top of last year’s 26 per cent increase. A staggering 80 per cent hike was even floated at a council meeting this summer.

Daigle and other residents have since formed a group of concerned taxpayers in an effort to find out how the municipality ended up in a situation that prompted intervention from the provincial government.

“We’re looking at a huge (tax) increase every year … we’re just not certain, like what does the future hold for (the town’s) finances?” the 55-year-old said in a recent phone interview.

“It’s very unfair and unfortunate and I really do feel for the single income families,” she said. “I think what we’re gonna see is a lot of home foreclosures.”

The township said in July that the financial crisis stems from operating deficits that accumulated over a decade.

“The municipality has been operating with zero cash reserves for over a year, relying heavily on credit to fund ongoing operations,” it said in a statement.

However, residents blame spending on major projects in recent years that the township couldn’t afford, including the construction of a new municipal building that also houses a health centre.

After the township said it had no choice but to lay off all municipal employees and temporarily stop providing services including garbage collection as of Aug. 1, the province stepped in with $300,000 in interim funding to prevent the shutdown.

Residents and observers say the situation in Fauquier-Strickland could set a worrying precedent as other small Ontario municipalities also struggle with their finances.

Danny Whalen, president of the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, pointed to Brethour, a township of around 100 people near Timiskaming, which also wrote to the province earlier this year to say it no longer had the financial resources to operate.

Of Ontario’s 444 municipalities, approximately 80 of have a population of less than 1,000, according to Statistics Canada data.

Whalen said some of the smallest struggling towns may not be able to survive if they don’t amalgamate or receive more robust, proactive monitoring of their finances.

“That’s a lot of municipalities and some of them, again, have 300 residents…maybe their neighbour is in the same financial position, you know, maybe they’re struggling as well,” he said.

“But if that’s the case, then why do we have two or three small councils that are all trying to run three separate businesses when one could handle it?”

Whalen is also a councillor in Temiskaming Shores, a municipality near the Quebec border that formed when several smaller towns merged in 2004.

“I can honestly say we’re in a much better financial position today than we would have been had we not (amalgamated),” he said.

The township of Fauquier-Strickland has said that its crisis sends “concerning signals” about the viability of northern Ontario communities and may affect other small municipalities along the Highway 11 corridor. That is especially true for families who moved to the region in search of affordable housing, it said in a July statement.

Many residents blame the town’s leadership for the crisis, and have called on longtime Mayor Madeleine Tremblay to resign. Tremblay and the town’s councillors have not responded to several requests for comment from The Canadian Press.

When she started hearing that the town was going bankrupt, Daigle said she hoped those were just rumours.

“We all thought the town was doing good, actually, because we saw new buildings going up,” she said, adding she had no idea that those projects would put so much financial strain on the taxpayers.

The new municipal building, which cost around $2.3 million, wasn’t urgently needed because the old town hall and medical clinic could be renovated at a fraction of what was spent, residents say. The town also had to spend around $1 million on its new water treatment plant, a project it needed urgently but couldn’t afford.

“They just kept overspending it with no controls, with no conscience of what it cost,” said Fauquier-Strickland resident Paul Lavoie.

Lavoie, who is also a member of the concerned taxpayers group, said there has been a lack of transparency from local officials, especially the mayor.

“It’s just a little bit every year as they went and they kept it hush-hush,” he said in a phone interview.

The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing said it is providing up to $300,000 in temporary funding to Fauquier-Strickland to prevent the shutdown of critical services – under certain conditions.

The township was directed to continue municipal services beyond Aug. 1 and not proceed with mass layoffs, according to the minutes of a July council meeting.

Whalen said the bailout is only a Band-Aid solution that doesn’t address the actual problem.

“You’re just opening the wound and allowing it to bleed longer, in my opinion,” he said.

Whalen said the government should take a more proactive role in monitoring the financial health of municipalities to prevent the kind of crisis Fauquier-Strickland is dealing with.

“We municipalities are creatures of the province, so the province is willing to set all these rules in place that we have to follow, but they don’t keep their eye on us to prove that we’re being fiscally responsible,” he said.

Whalen said the province should have acted sooner on the situation in Fauquier-Strickland since it receives annual financial statements from municipalities.

“But we believe the majority of the fault lies with the municipality,” he said, noting local officials should have gone to ratepayers before it was too late.

Despite the province’s financial help, Daigle said Fauquier-Strickland residents are struggling with the property tax hikes implemented so far. She expects to pay up to $900 more annually.

“It makes a difference on your retirement, it makes a difference on…single-family incomes, single mom, single dad – it’s really taken a hit to the community,” she said.

Many families are looking at increases anywhere between $500 and $900 on their tax bills.

Lavoie, who owns a campground, said he has to pay $7,000 more in 2025 compared to last year, at a time when his business is in “financial stress.”

“I worry about the future, about my kids, my grandkids, and my great-grandkids,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2025.

Sharif Hassan, The Canadian Press